I managed to get tickets to see Marie Antoinette Style on the same day as the Cartier exhibition, so after visiting that exhibition and having a cup of tea and a very nice slice of cake in the cafe I headed into my second event of the day. On display were a surprising amount of Marie Antoinette’s belongings as well as items contemporary to her life and items that were inspired by her life and fashion choices centuries after her execution.
When I first saw the Cartier exhibition advertised I wasn’t sure I would be able to fit it in around family commitments but thankfully by around June things had opened up and I was able to book a ticket to the exhibition – for October. The exhibition is now sold out but it’s proven so popular that they are releasing extra tickets for some evenings until it closes on 16 November, so it’s still worth checking their website every so often. Members of the V&A of course can visit for free without pre-booking needed.
At the entrance to Paddington Station at the corner of Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street can be found this lovely bronze sculpture called The Wild Table of Love. It’s the creation of British and Australian artists Gillie and Marc. It’s a very well detailed sculpture intended to provoke thoughts of unity and protection of the ecosystem.
Last October’s trip to London got off to a rocky start when my hotel cancelled on me less than 12 hours before check in. Although I was offered an alternative it wasn’t in a particularly convenient location for what I had planned so I ended up doing some pretty intensive searching myself that lead me to a hotel offering a last minute deal near Hyde Park and Paddington Train Station. This was quite handy as it allowed me to finally visit the Paddington statue at the station and, as I was to discover, another temporary Paddington statue in the area.
On my most recent visit to London I did a fair bit of walking around neighbourhoods I hadn’t spent much time in before. This lead to me taking photographs of two sculptures that turned out to be by the same sculptor. Allan Sly is an English sculptor and senior lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts. The first sculpture I came across also happened to be one of his earliest public artworks. Located just outside Edgware Road Tube Station The Window Cleaner was installed in 1990 – he’s staring up at the tall Capital House building which has a lot of windows, and wondering how he’s going to manage them with his small ladder.
In early October I headed to London to attend a couple of exhibitions, one of which was this exploration of the life of Ranjit Singh. I’m on the Wallace Collection‘s email list and it sounded like an interesting exhibition on a subject I know nothing about though I’m not sure I knew a great deal more than I did before. I’ve been to a few paid exhibitions at the Wallace Collection now and while they have interesting items on display I never feel they go into a great deal of depth about the subject matter. Still, I did learn more while researching this post so I suppose that’s something!
Last week I headed down to London for a couple of days to attend two exhibitions, the first of which was the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery. Van Gogh is one of my favourite painters so when I saw the announcement I knew that I would be attending. The exhibition is being billed as a once in a century event and it was easy to see why, there are paintings on loan from galleries as far away as the United States and Japan and some that are in private collections and rarely ever seen in public. There were also paintings that are displayed together again for the first time since Van Gogh painted them.
Eltham Palace and Gardens is an English Heritage property in London that has been on my to visit list for a very long time. Finally last October I set aside a day to visit. I travelled via train from London Bridge to Mottingham (about 20 minutes) then it was an easy 15 minute or so walk from the station to the Palace. As an English Heritage member admission was free. From the entrance with the car park (there is another entrance around the corner) you walk along a path by the side of the gardens until you’re crossing over the bridge and the moat as it was in the 14th century.
On a recent trip to London I made the spontaneous decision to head out to see the Titanosaur exhibition at the NHM as I had a couple of hours to kill after checking into my hotel. The exhibit had been on my general to do list in London since it was first announced but I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to make it until I realised that the museum closed later than I thought it did, at 5.50pm, so I would be able to fit it in afterall.
Marking the boundary of the City of London these dragons are from the London Coal Exchange which was demolished in the 1960s. The Corporation of London’s street committee selected the statues as the model for the boundary markers in 1964 and replicas were erected at main entrances to the City.
Louise Jayne's Blog 